THE NEW YORKER public function was making a speech, which poor Lazik wasn't listening to. The sigh was the beginning of a pro- longed complication with the revolu- tionary police. That period of Soviet literature is, of course, unknown in Cuba, though reading it could have spared the Cubans from repeating his- tory. This time, however, Marx's fa- mous joke-that every great historical event occurs twice, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce" -isn't borne out: in this instance, it was a tragic event in the Soviet Union, and today, seventy years later, it is a tragedy in Cuba. I N Cuba, one is informed daily that the Comandante's initiatives have produced historic changes in the culti- vation or harvesting of sugarcane, in housing construction, in military strat- egy in Africa, in the teaching of lan- guage, in street-cleaning. If one asks what prompts the Comandante to make speeches lasting for hours in the neigh- bor hoods or before television cameras, the reply seems to impugn the intelli- gence of the person posing the question: The Comandante speaks in order to teach; he's a pedagogue; he resorts to the best form of collective education, for the citizens all pay attention to him -it's the fastest way to educate. Those who believe that forcing people to listen to a single opinion on every subject has nothing to do with education are very cautious-but perhaps decreasingly so -about exposing themselves to the "Opinion Collection Form" employed by the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. In my weeks in Cuba, I was unable to avoid constant collisions with the Comandante's omniscience. Any topic I broached produced references to some speech of his. On one occasion, the Argentine Ambassador in Havana in- vited me for lunch at his residence, along with Ricardo Alarcón, Castro's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. This knowledgeable man, who had spent many years in New York as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations, couldn't conduct an intelligent conversation on the Latin- American situation, because every ar- gument had to conclude with an em- phasis on the role that Fidel Castro would play. I declared in vain, for 65 instance, that supplying arms to Salva- doran guerrillas or maintaining an ideological hold on Daniel Ortega could have no major influence on Latin-American affairs. Señor Alarcón simply denied this: he knew the role that Castro fancied he occupied in the world, and wasn't about to err in the role he himself was obliged to play in the presence of a journalist. This kind of madness, with its re- sulting collective supporting hypocrisy, is the dominant reality I encountered in Cuba: it defines society, government, cultural life, work, family relations. If hypocrisy, corruption, and resig- nation are second nature in Cuban society, ignorance constitutes its ner- vous system. The statistics regarding the winning battle against illiteracy are infuriating. If it is true that every Cuban knows how to read and write, it is likewise true that every Cuban has access to nothing worth reading and must be very cautious about what he writes. In the bookstore at Twenty- third and L Streets, opposite the Ha- bana Libre Hotel, the shelves are over- flowing with Spanish translations of Russian writers, and so are the shelves I 1 ! ... <. II> ,.... , ... " ...f , h l 'L "'\ l ,Þ. 8 A r7 DREAMS ; :". .-'--- .. 'l , r' '" s o{' i} f' Ä' !i " \ \ . .... ,,", I .#' ,i"" :.- .:.:".;>>" \ j ..( - I I... l- I. , , I J C' , , f' -- . "'; ... ....: 8 F A c '> I .... 1 o AI Share it with us... I = hotel nikko méxico Campos Elíseo 204, Polanco, 1] ')60 Mexico City, Tels.: 203-4800 and 203-4020, Telex: 1763524 NIKOME. Fax: 255-5586. NIkko Hotels Inten1àtIonal: USA and Canada, TOLL FREE: 1-800-NIKKO-US-(645-5687) Lo Angeles, CA.: (213) 322-02-13 Computer Access: APOLLO NK 26L'2/ SABRE NK 1Li532/ PARS NK lLi532 or any office of]apan Ajr Lines.